Exploring Seattle

On Monday we focused on Pioneer Square, the original centre of Seattle, although the business district later moved north. We used our guide book, Walking Seattle, to explore the area before doing Seattle's famous 'underground' tour.

Seattle is a younger city than Sydney, somewhat surprisingly for us who are used to thinking of Australian cities as relative newcomers. The first European settlers arrived in Seattle in 1852, and unwisely chose a coastal flat as the site of the city. The original buildings were all destroyed in a fire in 1889, and most of the existing buildings date from the rebuilding that took place immediately after. We enjoyed

walking along streets of medium height buildings, largely in brick with beautiful decorative detail. The Pioneer Building and place, Occidental Park and the adjacent Grand Central Arcade, and the 1914 Smith Tower, whose 42 storeys were a record for the time, were amongst our favourites.

After lunch we did the underground tour, which explores and explains the rebuilding of Seattle 10 feet higher than its original level. That the original settlement was barely above sea level created many problems, the most dramatic of which was the inability to dispose of sewage. The tour takes you along the lower level which is largely preserved below the current sidewalks and ground floors.

On Tuesday we planned to begin with a visit to the Seattle Art Museum, only to discover that it is not open on Monday or Tuesday. So the main event of the day was a one hour ferry trip around Elliott Bay, with a reasonably informative commentary and lots of views of both the city and the docks.

So on Wednesday we picked up the museum theme, seeing both the Seattle Art Museum and the Museum of History and Industry (MOHAI). Outside the Art Museum is the landmark moving sculpture, Hammering Man.

In addition to local contemporary art the museum displays art from the Pacific Region, including from the First Peoples of the American Northwest, and some good pieces of Australian Aboriginal art. The glass collection features not only Chihuly but also some of his

students and colleagues and has more of a chronological approach than does the Chihuly exhibition.

We revisited the Grand Central arcade for lunch, as we were so taken by it on Monday, and then caught the bus to MOHAI. This museum is an uninhibited celebration of Seattle's achievements, with entertaining cover of history and understandably congratulatory coverage of the innovative and prosperous industry of the city, including Boeing, Microsoft and Amazon.

Thursday was the first wet day since we arrived, which we are grateful for given Seattle's reputation for rain. We first had to move out of our BnB, which has been just adequate - in a convenient position for us, but a very small bedroom and general air of abandonment as the owner rarely appeared. We will spend the next two nights at Owen and Sophie's place before moving on to San Francisco on Saturday.

We then caught a bus to the University of Washington, where we visited the Henry Art Museum and the Burke Museum (natural history). The Henry displays contemporary art, but was a bit thin we felt, although we enjoyed the room filled with silver balloons that you can walk into, so that you are completely surrounded by balloons. A bit claustrophobic of course, as is no doubt the intention. They also have a James Turrell sky garden, rather like the one in Canberra but with an elliptical opening, though because of the climate it has a fibreglass cover which is closed when there is more than 20% chance of rain - which is quite often.

The Burke Museum was pleasant, with schoolchildren as the main audience. Still, it is well maintained and varied, with exhibits on peoples of the Pacific, local fossil records, volcanoes of the region and similar.

Owen and Sophie were preparing to fly out tomorrow for a wedding in Hawaii. They will be gone for five days. Then we will see Owen again when he comes to Sydney for Ingrid's wedding.

On our last day, Friday, we visited the Sculpture Park, which is an outdoor extension of the Seattle Art Museum. The park has been built cleverly on several levels and crosses over a highway and skirts a railway line. It incorporates various types of vegetation as well as many large sculptural works. Very pleasant to wander around.

We had lunch in a surprisingly good French patisserie, before returning home rather early to think about our next stage - San Francisco.